Hansjörg Wyss

Hansjörg Wyss
Lausanne, 2014
Born	(1935-09-19) September 19, 1935 Bern, Switzerland
Residence	Wilson, Wyoming, U.S.
Alma mater	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich[1] Harvard Business School
Occupation	Former CEO of Synthes Chairman of The Wyss Foundation and The HJW Foundation
Net worth	$6.1 billion (January 2015)[2]

Hansjörg Wyss (pronounced HAHNZ-jorg VEES) (born 19 September 1935) is a Swiss entrepreneur and businessman. As of 2015, Wyss ranks #240 on the Forbes list of billionaires, with a net worth of approximately $6.1 billion.^[2][3]

Early career

Wyss was born and raised in Bern, Switzerland. After receiving a Master of Science degree in Civil and Structural Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 1959, Wyss attended the Harvard University Graduate School of Business from 1963 to 1965. From 1965 to 1969, he worked in various positions in the textile industry, including plant engineer and project manager for Chrysler in Pakistan, Turkey, and the Philippines.

Synthes USA

In 1974, Wyss founded "Synthes USA", the US division of Synthes, a firm manufacturing Swiss-designed medical devices for orthopedic and trauma surgery. It became the third industrial partner of AO/ASIF. Synthes USA started marketing Synthes products in the USA the following year and later also in Canada.^[4] Wyss later became CEO of the entire company and over the next 30 years built it into an industry giant that specialized in making plates and screws to stabilize broken bones.

In 2009, top executives at Synthes were indicted by United States federal prosecutors for conducting untested medical procedures on human patients without the authorization of the Food and Drug Administration. Three elderly people died. In 2009, the U.S. Attorneys for Eastern Pennsylvania formally handed down indictments. Federal prosecutors named Wyss as “Person Number 7” in the criminal conspiracy. He escaped indictment but four of Synthes' top executives went to prison. The company negotiated a plea deal in the amount of $23 million, after which Wyss sold the company for $21.3 billion in cash and stock to Johnson & Johnson.^[5]

Environmental protection

Wyss is actively involved in landscape protection by buying up the mineral rights from the mining companies.^[6] In 1998, he established the Wyss Foundation,^[7] which establishes and sponsors informal partnerships between non-governmental organisations and the United States administration to place large swathes of land under government protection. On account of these efforts, almost 4,400,000 acres (18,000 km²) of land have been declared national park districts.^[8]

Wyss serves on the boards of The Wilderness Society, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Rails-to-Trails, and the Grand Canyon Trust, he is one of the founders ^[9] and is an honorary member of the AO Foundation.^[10] Wyss donated 3.7 million Swiss francs to the Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway, which enabled the organisation to restore the railway line also between Gletsch and Oberwald.^[11]

In 2000, Wyss purchased the 900-acre (3.6 km²) Halter Ranch in western Paso Robles, California. In 2004, Forbes ranked Wyss the 26th wealthiest person in Europe with almost $6 billion; by 2005, he rose to 18th place with an accumulated wealth of almost $8 billion.^[12] In 2006, Wyss was ranked #72 on The Times list of 100 Richest People in the World.^[13]

On 29 January 2015, it was reported that John Podesta is the driving force inside the White House to block 12 million acres of land in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, and who founded the Center for American Progress (CAP), had been hired by Wyss in 2013 as a "consultant". Wyss has donated $4 million USD to CAP, and is a member of CAP's Board. Podesta worked at Wyss’s HJW Foundation in 2013 and joined the White House in January 2014. Federal conflict of interest rules overseen by the Office of Government Ethics also instruct political appointees to “not work on any matter” if the work of their previous employer “would raise a question regarding the employee's impartiality.” The law applies to White House officials and it is unclear if Podesta ever even sought a waiver. Wyss lives in Wyoming where he continues his campaign against oil and gas drilling, as well as seeking grazing bans on federal lands. At the end of 2013, he merged the HJF Foundation with his Wyss Foundation, building a private foundation that has amassed a net value of $2 billion, according to tax filings. Podesta has been criticized for CAP's excessive secrecy. A Nation article in 2013 accused Podesta's CAP of being “among the most secretive of all think tanks concerning its donors.” In early January 2015, CAP gave a list of its donors to a Washington Post reporter, Greg Sargent, but any references to Wyss were omitted; the list reported three “anonymous” donors. 2013 tax documents from the HJW Foundation and the Wyss Foundation show that Wyss contributed $1.5 million to CAP that year alone.^[14]

Support of scientific research

In 2007, he received the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award,^[15][16] and in fall 2008, it was announced that Wyss donated the largest single endowment from one source in Harvard's history when he gave $125 million to found a multidisciplinary institute, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.^{[3][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]}

In 2012-13, he announce the creation of the Campus Biotech and of its Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuro-engineering in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2014, Wyss donated $120 million to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and the University of Zurich for the new Wyss Translational Center Zurich.

References

External links

• Halter Ranch
• Hansjörg Wyss, Honorary Doctorate of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Basel
• Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University